Administration Downplays Afghanistan Threat

A quick trip around Hannity's America...

Selective Intel

Democrats long accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to suit its own purposes. Now, a report out of D.C. accuses the Obama administration of doing the exact same thing.

The president has become a public spectacle as he wrings his hands over whether to send troops to Afghanistan or not. McClatchy News reports that as he does so, the White House is coloring the intelligence that you are getting. Over 15 intelligence officials confirmed that the administration is minimizing reports from the intelligence community, the military community and the State Department about the risks posed by the Taliban in Afghanistan to justify ditching McChrystal's recommendations.

I wonder when all those Democrats will start complaining about a tainted and inaccurate intelligence report. I don't know about you, but I'm not holding my breath.

Phantom Legislation

America's universal nightmare is inching closer and closer to becoming a reality.

Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee will vote on the Baucus health care bill and according to Townhall.com, the senators on that committee will yet again cast their votes on a piece of legislation without actually reading it.

Why? Because it doesn't exist. Only portions of the Baucus bill have leaked in recent days and countless amendments will still be added.

This has caused the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to warn, "The real bill will be another 1,000-page, trillion-dollar experiment."

You know, nobody read the stimulus bill either, and we all know how well that worked out.

Have You Heard?

The mainstream Obama-mania media was quick to praise the Congressional Budget Office's scoring of the Democrats' phantom health care bill. Last week they were falling all over themselves to explain how Senator Max Baucus' bill — which costs nearly $1 trillion — would somehow magically reduce the deficit. But they conveniently left out another portion of the CBO's analysis.

As HotAir.com points out, the director of the CBO Douglas Elmendorf also concluded that tort reform would slash the federal deficit by $54 billion over the next 10 years.

So if President Obama's so concerned about reducing the deficits, it sounds like tort reform would be a good place to start.

No Questions for You

The Meltdown is brought to you by the one and only former vice president Al Gore.

At a conference of environmental journalists on Friday, Gore took a few questions, but based on his reaction, I don't think he was expecting this one about his movie "An Inconvenient Truth":

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PHELIM MCALEER, JOURNALIST: The British high court in London found "An Inconvenient Truth" had nine significant errors in it. Given this film has been shown in schools to children, do you accept those nine significant errors? I know you say that's funded by deniers — but a judge in the British high court after a lot of hearing found there were nine significant errors.

This have been shown to children. Have you — do you accept those findings and have you done anything to correct those errors?

AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm not going to go through all of those. The ruling was in favor of the movie, by the way. And the ruling was in favor of showing the movie in schools.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Actually, Al, the judge ruled that it was illegal to show your movie in British schools unless it was accompanied by a warning indicating that it's a political, not a scientific film.

Take a look at what ended up happening to that journalist when he continued to question the former vice president:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCALEER: He hasn't answered the question.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have 10 minutes left for these people to ask questions.

MCALEER: Yes, but I would appreciate his answer to the court. A British high court judge has – the mic is off, my mic is off.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

I guess that should not come as much of a surprise considering that the vanquished vice president doesn't think there's room for debate on climate change.

I do. The debate is over. There's no global warming.

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